1 year ago
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28 min: Good save from Ramsdale! United break through Antony on the right. He cuts inside and slides a square pass to McTominay, who opens his body to shape a first-time shot towards goal from 25 yards. Ramsdale flies to his left to push it behind for a corner, a decent save.
27 min “Afternoon Rob,” says Stephen Carr. “Big flag in the crowd there saying ‘The Arsenal’. What’s that about? Is this the definite Arsenal? Are other Arsenals available?”
I’m not sure about the origin but there were often known as The Arsenal back in the day, certainly when I was growing up. I can hear Don Howe saying it now.
26 min Arsenal look dangerous every time they come forward. Odegaard scoops a languid pass over the top to Saka, whose sharp cutback is booted clear at the near post by McTominay.
That was a terrific team goal. A corner was half cleared, but Arsenal came again. Zinchenko and Odegaard combined neatly to find the overlapping Xhaka, who guided a brilliant firt-time cross towards the far post. Nketiah got the wrong side of Wan-Bissaka, who was having an impromptu nap, and steered an accomplished header past de Gea from six yards.
GOAL! Arsenal 1-1 Man Utd (Nketiah 23)
Eddie Nketiah equalises for Arsenal!
22 min: Chance for Martinelli! A nice training-ground corner from Arsenal. Saka slides it deliberately to Martinelli, 15 yards out in line with the near post, and he whips a first-time shot that goes a few yards wide.
21 min Arsenal have come from behind to beat Fulham and West Ham at home this season so they won’t panic. Saka and Xhaka combine neatly to find Nketiah, whose first-time shot from 12 yards hits Varane and goes behind for a corner.
20 min Marcus Rashford has a great record against Arsenal, but until today it had all been at Old Trafford.
19 min White is booked for a foul on Rashford.
He is so damn hot right now, and this was all his own work. Fernandes gave him the ball 30 yards from goal, slightly to the left of centre. He nutmegged Partey, an achievement in itself, moved inside and rifled an early shot from 25 yards that flew past the diving Ramsdale’s right hand and into the bottom corner. That’s a marvellous goal.
GOAL! Arsenal 0-1 Man Utd (Rashford 17)
Marcus Rashford gives Man Utd the lead with a sensational goal!
16 min United continue to have plenty of the ball, though their tempo is much slower than Arsenal’s. For a variety of reasons, this is quite a slow United team.
15 min Saka’s inswinging cross is turned behind for a corner by Wan-Bissaka. It’s headed away by Weghorst, which is one of his uses.
13 min “Points deducted from you both for missing Van Persie,” says Kerrith Birtland, who loses points for suggesting we should lose points for not stating the bleedin’ obvious.
Let’s just get them all out the way so we can go enjoy our food: George Graham, Viv Anderson, Frank Stapleton, Alexis Sanchez David Herd, Jimmy Rimmer, Andy Cole and Brian Kidd. I think that’s it, in addition to the ones already mentioned.
10 min Fernandes is robbed by Odegaard, who runs to the edge of the area and plays a cute reverse pass to Martinelli. He stumbles through a couple of woolly challenges and hits a shot that is well blocked by Shaw.
At the moment both teams look more dangerous down their left, which means Bukayo Saka will score any minute now.
9 min Martinelli curls high and wide from the left edge of the area. It’s been a bright, breezy start to the game.
8 min United have settled quite well after a difficult first few minutes, and at the moment they are having more of the ball.
6 min: Big penalty appeal for United! Martinez’s nothing ball from the halfway line somehow found its way through to Fernandes, who knocked it past Ramsdale and then fell over. There was contact, though he went down far too easily. I’m still not entirely sure it wasn’t a foul, but VAR were right not to intervene – unlike the Danny Welbeck incident yesterday, that wasn’t a clear and obvious error.
6 min “It is not exactly a ‘hot take’ to say winning the league back to back is much harder in the second season,” says Brendan Large. “Just being champions tends to raise the level of the opponents. I wonder if Arsenal will suffer a smaller version of this in the second half of this season. I think teams (just like you journos) have actually accepted that there isn’t a weak spot in this Asenal team. It has been said again and again that City will come good and Arsenal will fall away, but it hasn’t happened and now teams are coming to the conclusion that a point against Arsenal is a great result.”
How dare you. Who the hell do you think you are?. The only team who ever have and ever will suffer second-half-of-the-season syndrome are Phil Brown’s Hull City in 2008-09.
5 min A couple of attacks for United, though nothing to write home about. Odegaard fouls Eriksen, which leads to the first referee-based moans of the afternoon from the crowd.
4 min “Just to let you know,” begins Darrien Bold, “how much I’m looking forward to the Henrikh Mkhitaryan/Mikael Silvestre /Jim Leighton derby! Go well.”
Two points for mentioning Jim Leighton. One point deducted for omitting Ian Ure.
3 min: Chance for Odegaard! Zinchenko dummies to shoot and finds Martinelli on the left side of the area. He cuts the ball back carefully to Odegaard, who completely mistimes his shot from 15 yards. It’s all Arsenal, and moments later Partey volleys wide of the near post from Xhaka’s cross.
2 min The corner is poor and booted away at the near post.
1 min Arsenal love a fast start, and here they go again: Martinelli has won a corner off Wan-Bissaka after 49 seconds.
1 min Manchester United kick off from right to left as we watch.
“Concerning Matt Dony and Arsenal winning as a one-off...” begins the restyled Jeff Sax. “If there is one thing I know about the Premier League, it is full of surprises.”
Well, indeed. Like Arsenal being top of the league. I think they were 40/1 in August.
Here come the players. There’s a cracking atmosphere at the Emirates, where the fans are starting to believe the unbelievable.
“The title race won’t quite be in City’s hands,” says Jason Elliott, “as it may hinge on the results between Arsenal and Manchester City, who have yet to play each other this season. Should Arsenal manage to lose to Manchester United today, then it will still be as much in Arsenal’s hands as it is city’s. Perhaps a more apt description of such a state of affairs would be, it’s up for grabs now!”
Ha, quite. Well, that was kind of my point – it can be in two teams’ hands at the same time, as it was when Man Utd ballsed up an eight-point lead with six to play in 2011-12. It’s even more important to keep it out of your opponent’s hands as it is to keep it in your own.
“Possibly bordering on ‘Unpopular opinion’ territory,” high-fives Matt Dony, “and I reserve the right to vehemently deny I ever said this, but I think that Arsenal potentially winning the league is more of a Leicester one-off type thing than the start of a sustained period of title-challenging,.
“They’re a very good side, and Arteta has done a wonderful, patient job in instilling a mindset and a system. There’s much to admire about them. But they do seem to be playing at their limit this year. Things are going well for them. The whole squad have been performing well, and they haven’t been too bothered by injuries. I’m not sure how sustainable that is. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’re back in the 7th-3rd shake-up next season. But, as I said, I’ve been wrong before…”
They haven’t won it yet! I do know what you mean, and Arteta has prioritised the league very deftly this season. Next year will be different because you can’t play a B team in the Champions League. But they have taken Liverpool’s crown as the smartest recruiters in the league, and winning the title would make them infinitely more attractive to potential signings.
A few months ago I thought it would be 2-3 years tops before players like Saka and Martinelli were bought for huge money. Now I’m not so sure. If they don’t lose any of their stars, that alone should give them longevity because they’re the youngest team in the league. Of their best XI, only Thomas Partey (29) and Granit Xhaka (30) are over the age of 26. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect them to dominate like City, mainly because of City, but I do think they can cheat the system if they win the title this year.
“It truly is a great day to be anticipating this game with the old mixture of dread and excitement,” says Zack Gomperts-Mitchelson. “My nostalgia about this fixture even more turbo-charged by having been a young teenager at its height. Pure sepia.
“Weirdly, I think half the game comes down to the first time McTominay boots Odegaard 15ft in the air. If he gets a booking it’ll be a football game, if he doesn’t I’ll be sharpening my excuses fingers on Twitter like you wouldn’t believe.”
And so does Mikel Arteta
They are one of the best teams in the league. You look at what they have done in the last 2-3 months, they deserve to be where they are. We’ll have to play at our best to beat them. [What would it mean to get to 50 points after only 19 games?] It’s just another three points. We just want to play well and do what we need to do to win the game. [Should we expect another fast start?] In any game, the better you start, the more chance you have of winning.
Erik ten Hag speaks
[On Scott McTominay’s inclusion] We have a special role for him in our mind. We hope it will work, a little bit like the last time [against Arsenal]; that worked well. These two teams have a great history – it was a big fight, great, spectacular fight [in the late 90s and early 00s], good for the audience. I hope today is as well.
Manchester City have beaten Wolves 3-0, with Erling Haaland scoring a hat-trick. They’re now two points behind Arsenal, who have two games in hand.
A slightly confusing consequence of today’s result is that, unless Arsenal beat United, the title will be back in City’s hands.
There are four full-backs in today’s starting XIs. One of them is a central midfielder, one has spent most of his career playing centre-back or centre-midfield, one used to be a winger and one has been a revelation at centre-back in the past few weeks.
Nick Ames’ big-match preview
Team news
Arsenal are unsurprisingly unchanged from last week’s impressive win at Spurs, though the new signing Leandro Trossard is on the bench.
Erik ten Hag has picked a more adventurous side than some of us expected, with only half of McFred chosen to replace the suspended Casemiro. It’s Mc, and that’s the only change change from the draw at Crystal Palace on Wednesday.
Arsenal (4-1-2-3) Ramsdale; White, Saliba, Gabriel, Zinchenko; Partey; Odegaard, Xhaka; Saka, Nketiah, Martinelli.
Substitutes: Turney, Tierney, Tomiyasu, Holding, Lokonga, Vieira, Smith Rowe, Marquinhos, Trossard.
Man Utd (possible 4-1-2-3) De Gea; Wan-Bissaka, Varane, Martinez, Shaw; McTominay; Fernandes, Eriksen; Antony, Weghorst, Rashford.
Substitutes: Heaton, Lindelof, Maguire, Malacia, Fred, Mainoo, Pellistri, Elanga, Garnacho.
Referee Anthony Taylor.
Preamble
Do call it a comeback. Sure, Arsenal and Manchester United have been here for years, but they haven’t exactly been rocking their peers or putting suckers in fear. That’s starting to change, and how refreshing it is to preview a match between Arsenal and Manchester United by talking about the present and the future rather than the past.
There’s nowt wrong with remembering the glory days of the late 1990s and early 2000s. This was, after all, the greatest rivalry in English football history. But it’s not a great sign when the past is the only thing you talk about, and in some ways Arsenal v Manchester United has been the saddest Premier League fixture of the past decade: two old fellas at the bar, leering absent-mindedly at the top shelf as they reflect on the good old days when they engaged in fist-based discourse after 12 pints.
Now, for the first time in a while, a match between them is inextricably linked to the title race. United aren’t quite back back back, but they have made eyecatching progress under Erik ten Hag and appear to be moving inexorably towards a permanent state of basic competence.
Arsenal, meanwhile, have taken a shortcut from also-rans to runaway leaders in increasingly glorious style. With each passing week, and each swaggering, authoritative victory, it becomes harder to make a case for them not winning the title. Two decades. Without winning the Premier League. And every player knows they will go down in history.
A week ago this was tentatively hyped as the clash of two title contenders. That changed when United suffered a sickening double blow at Crystal Palace on Wednesday – Casemiro’s suspension and Michael Olise’s last-minute equaliser. They are eight points behind Arsenal, having played a game more, so realistically their targets are still fourth place and a trophy.
More than anything, today is a terrific litmus test for United. At home they have already beaten four of the Group Formerly Known As The Big Six, albeit by playing like the away side in most cases, but they don’t yet have a statement victory on the road.
Arsenal have already passed multiple tests, even if the biggest – three games against Manchester City, starting in the FA Cup on Friday – are to come. Their only league defeat of the season was in the return game at Old Trafford, when they pushed too hard, too early for victory and were picked off on the break.
Crucially, Thomas Partey was missing that day. Today it’s United who have greater problems with injuries and suspensions; that, home advantage and the confidence created by 15 wins in 18 games makes Arsenal fairly strong favourites. United beat Arsenal 3-1 in September. Today you can get 3/1 on them winning full stop.
Kick off 4.30pm.
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